Economics Roundtable

After 76 months, we finally got back to the prerecession level of payroll employment.

Click on the image to get a bigger version.

Jobs

The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .

Click on the image to get a bigger version.

Graph-of-the-Year Candidates

Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?

Economy Experts

Did Group of 20 ministers make any progress toward agreement on currency and "balanced growth" issues at their weekend meeting in South Korea? Based on what happened, what do you think the prospects are for the G-20 summit next month?

All this past month, the foreclosure fraud scandal has been spreading, and toward the end of this week, markets began taking notice -- punishing stocks of banks exposed to documentation fraud. But what are the real implications of this morass? In a year, will we look back on this as ...

Last week's jobs report from the Labor Department brought more bleak news: weak private-sector job growth, an unemployment rate steady at 9.6 percent and a net national jobs loss, due largely to layoffs in state and local governments. As you look closer at the Labor Department report, do you see ...

Remarks last week from New York Fed President William C. Dudley and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans suggested that the Fed is leaning toward another round of quantitative easing. The next Federal Open Market Committee meeting isn't until early November, but let's say it was held today -- and you ...

Will the prospect of greater political gridlock in Washington, especially on deficit reduction, become a tangible source of fear in financial markets? If Republicans block any tax increases and neither side wants to touch entitlement spending for anybody older that 55, what are the chances Congress can come up ...

When President Obama meets with leaders from other Group of 20 nations this week, what is he most likely to accomplish in terms of persuading countries to adopt more "balanced'' growth strategies? The United States has been imploring countries that rely on exports for growth and have huge trade surpluses, ...

Home prices have plunged by about one-third since the peak of the housing bubble, according to the S&P/Case Schiller composite index of 20 major cities. Sales of new and existing homes slumped again after the expiration of the Home Buyer's tax credit. And on Monday, Corelogic reported ...

How much further can the housing market sink? When will it begin to rebound?

Home prices have plunged by about one-third since the peak of the housing bubble, according to the S&P/Case Schiller composite index of 20 major cities. Sales of new and existing homes slumped again after the expiration of ...

In the two decades before the financial crisis, there was remarkably little partisan or ideological disagreement among economists about how the Federal Reserve should conduct monetary policy. Liberals and conservatives both wanted to keep inflation below about 2 percent and unemployment below about 5 percent. Disagreements were over nuance and ...

A single paragraph in the Transportation Department's fiscal 2012 budget could fundamentally alter the funding mechanism for highways and other transit. The administration is calling for replacing the current highway trust fund with a "transportation trust fund" that will have separate accounts for highways, transit, high-speed rail, and a national ...